If you just want a literature section of about one page and then vocabulary from that section and about 4 exercises a week to go with it, I highly recommend Wordly Wise 3000. This book is not Wordly Wise, which I do not recommend. You will find that the Wordly Wise 3000 books have a book for every grade level and have an excellent literature selection in each unit. After the initial beginner books, any book level will work for most learners. I would prefer that the publisher go back to numbering these books instead of assigning grade levels. The positive aspect is that it is inexpensive, approximately $10, the negative aspect is that it is a workbook approach. But it is very well written.

EPS publishes quite a few styles of Vocabulary Workbooks. The format is different for each style. The words in each book are chosen according to different criteria.

For example: Vocabulary from the Classical Roots chooses words based on the Latin root. It begins with roots such as uni and bi. Then you study words such as Universal, and Bicycle which relate back to the root. This is a very good way to remember and relate vocabulary words and other words you had not previously encountered.

Wordly Wise 3000 is a literature based vocabulary book. You read a literature selection and learn the vocabulary words from the context of the story. This is a very good method for children who not only need extra reading practice, but who are also helped by getting knowledge in context.

One more thing about Wordly Wise 3000. I use it often with students who are improving weak comprehension skills. It also adapts well to Lindamood Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing techniques. The fill in the blank questions move through the 13 comprehension skills, from getting the facts to drawing inferences. I have noticed that this sometimes exasperates children and parents, but the questions are well written and worth working through.

The heavy use of riddles, crossword puzzles and hidden messages makes Wordly Wise more difficult to use. Although Worldly Wise 3000 also has puzzles, I believe they have been used more judiciously. The way the words are presented in Wordly Wise is also a little less clear. The words are presented in multiple forms ie. as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. This makes it a little more difficult. It’s not that Wordly Wise is a “bad” vocabulary book, its just that it is not as user friendly and does not teach the words in as usable a format as does Vocabulary for the Classical Roots or Wordly Wise 3000. Think of Wordly Wise 3000 as the new and improved Wordly Wise.

Word lists may more clearly illustrate the point. Below, I’ve detailed 3 lists from EPS vocabulary books. EPS also publishes other vocabulary books which we are not considering here.

* Vocabulary from the Classical Roots: monarch, monogram, monolith, monologue, monopoly, unanimous, unilateral, duplex, duplicate, bisect, bilateral, bipartisan (These word meanings are more easily remembered because they are tied together by their common roots of mono, unus, duo, and bi.)

One of the greatest desires of homeschool parents is to encourage a reading habit in their children. When our children are just babies we start reading to them. We bring our schedules under control so that we will have time to stop our routines and sit down to read. I know this isn’t easy, it isn’t easy for me either. Somehow the tyranny of the urgent can keep us from getting done all the important things we want to do.

Recently, Carla, a homeschooling mother of two young boys wrote with concerns about whether she should use the “wait until eight” approach that homeschool pioneers Raymond and Dorothy Moore promoted.The Moores suggested that children do not need any formal education until after they turned eight years old. Carla was wondering if this would work for one of her sons but she had some misgivings about the possible results.

Carla wrote:“I’m not concerned with the grade level as I could easily wait a year with both of them and it would be fine, but I was wondering how you teach the basics especially to the 7 year old, and stay within the state homeschool law, while using the Moore’s plan.He is very weak in basic math facts, but very advanced in sequencing type things.He’s an okay reader and needs work on penmanship.He would probably be labeled ADHD if he were in school… “

Carla, I think that while the Moore’s were not advocating a pencil and paper approach they did suggest active hands-on approaches to young learning. A child really does much better if mom first teaches him to move around efficiently and effectively in the home. And believe me, that is a lot of work! This means teaching a child to do chores, like cleaning his room, doing the dishes and folding clothes. You will especially find that the child labeled ADHD has a hard time with these tasks. And mom cannot take her eyes off him for a minute! Or he will wander away and forget what he was supposed to be doing.

The training will most likely seem tedious and never ending, but I can assure you great rewards will eventually follow. If you do not faint or grow weary in well doing, you will reap huge benefits when he is older – much older. Older means possibly 17 years old! But at a time when other parents are despairing that their distractible children will never amount to anything, you will be amazed at what he is accomplishing and how has grown so mature.

Some parents can find it very difficult to teach children to do household work. That is because they are used to hitting the textbooks and insisting that their children sit quietly in chairs. Boys who are not doing seatwork but are washing dishes and spilling water everywhere can seem very out of control.

And telling a child to take items upstairs almost never works because they get dropped along the way. But, if you are determined and creative and break down (lesson plan) just exactly how you would get someone to deliver the socks all the way to the drawer, you will succeed in your educational efforts.

The same comments could be made about sorting a junk drawer. You teach them a rote method. “First we sort all the pencils, then the crayons, then the batteries.” This is the real work of education. If you can teach a child to tackle a problem like a junk drawer, then he will be equipped to tackle any scholastic problem. I would not hesitate to put junk drawer sorting down as a math activity. Look in your mathematics teacher’s manual, many hands – on activities in the math book are exactly like sorting a junk drawer.

The next step in education is to make small kits in boxes. Subjects like science, art and history lend themselves very well to being made into small kits. A kit can be any hands on activity, thrown into a box to keep it neatly together. For instance, I purchase a small hands on science book on electricity, gather all the items needed and place these together with the book in plastic box. You cannot just give a kit like this to a young child and tell him to do it. You have to sit there the whole time and watch him and weakly assist. Some good advice: all his kit work should be at or slightly below his ability level. Save the tougher stuff for later.

For handwriting, Handwriting Without Tears materials have extra activities in the teacher’s manual to improve hand/eye ability. A five minute instruction period 4 times a week will go a long way to neat handwriting.

For math, try a math book with LESS problems not more. Consider Spectrum Math by McGraw Hill and always have a number line and objects out for him to count with. When he can’t remember a math answer teach him to work it out on the number line or by counting objects instead of just sitting there, daydreaming and waitingfor the answer to fall out of the air. Learning to count out answers teaches a good work ethic which is much more important that getting any one math answer correct from memory, and counting out improves math memory anyway.

Finally, prepare a young child with lots and lots of language, like rhyming games, poetry and jumping rope and hand clapping rhymes. I could go on and on! Did you know that the number one predictor of reading success is the ability to rhyme? I would put any one of these activities under the category of reading instruction.

“but basically he is a pretty intelligent kid with too much energy for his little body!” Carla writes

Well Carla, welcome to the real world of real little boys. Your son’s energy will not last forever, though. I have raised seven children and five are boys. A little boy’s energy will all too soon turn into a teenage boy’s lethargy, and don’t get me started on Dad’s lack of energy! So, find a way to enjoy that bucking bronco while he’s around and arrange his homeschool to really use that energy up, and you will have great memories later.